I was 16 when I first travelled to Africa. It was 1972, my half-brother was working in Uganda and I flew out to join him for the summer. On my first night, in the lobby of the Speke Hotel in Kampala, I inquired rather boisterously about the man in military uniform whose photograph hung so prominently on the wall above us. I was ushered to one side and informed that it was best not to discuss such things in public.

A few weeks later I joined the cheering crowds when that same man, General Idi Amin Dada, made an official visit to his home town of Arua, which now lies in Uganda. The sense of excitement when that dusty cavalcade of black limousines swept into town, rifle-toting soldiers riding shotgun on the accompanying jeeps, has never left me.

I still have the shirt I was wearing that day. A museum piece of dictator-trash at its best, it is emblazoned with propaganda pictures and images of the cheering crowds at his takeover in a military coup. At its centre is a photograph identical to the one hanging in the Speke Hotel. On sale on every street corner, it was the garment of choice that day as the whole town was swept up in the general euphoria.

Although political thunder clouds were in the air, the memories of the three months I spent travelling around Uganda that summer have never dimmed. So when I first met Sarah, the woman who would become my wife, our mutual passion for Africa was one of the things that drew us together. Sarah had spent three years in her twenties working as a camp manager in safari lodges across South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and always spoke longingly of that time.

That stay reminded us of how much we missed life in the bush – and explains how I come to be writing these words looking out over the Linyanti River in the far north of Botswana. This is the location of Kings Pool camp, one of nearly 70 safari camps across southern Africa owned or run by Wilderness Safaris.

More remote and less well known than the Okavango Delta to the south, the Linyanti region is a rich mixture of woodland habitats and ancient floodplains, famous for its high concentrations of animals, particularly of elephant, but also lion, spotted hyena and wild dog. It is also one of the best places in Africa to go looking for leopard – our bush guides here estimate that there are eight individuals (four adult females, two adult males and two cubs from different mothers) living along the adjacent 25-mile stretch of the Linyanti River.

Over the next year, in this column and online, and starting with Kings Pool, Sarah and I will be reporting from a series of Wilderness camps, documenting the human stories of life behind the scenes, as well as the animal magic of the bush itself.

Every safari camp relies on a complicated set of logistics and staff who are both skilled and knowledgeable but who can also share their passion for the bush with the guests. Usually, the less people notice of wheels in motion, the better the camp is operating. But there will be enough of a soap opera going on in the background to satisfy any fan of Coronation Street or EastEnders.

Our current home, for example, has a roster of 42 staff serving a maximum of 18 guests. This is made up of managers, bush guides, waiters, bar staff, cooks, housekeepers and night watchmen. Additional freelance staff are brought in at intervals to help with maintenance. Of the 2,700 people employed by Wilderness, more than 85 per cent come from the remote rural communities surrounding the camps.

We will also be reporting on the various conservation and education projects that Wilderness Safaris runs. These range from conservation of endangered species and wildlife habitats to work in the surrounding communities, including HIV education and a "Children in the Wilderness" programme, in which young people from all over Botswana spend five days getting their first taste of life in the bush. So far, 2,500 children have taken part.

The working atmosphere behind the scenes in a safari camp feeds through into the experience of the guests. Almost always, that atmosphere stems from the managers themselves, and this camp is no exception. You can sense immediately that it's a happy place.

Thirty-year-old Onneetse Mazunga, universally known as One (pronounced Oné), manages the camp with her husband, Alex, a bush guide. "Being a young woman in this position was challenging at first, especially in our culture," she told us. "Talking to staff who are older than you and explaining why things need to be done was tricky at first. They understand now, and we are family here. We have fun together and we respect each other.

"This camp is a very special one. It has a lot of history. It's called Kings Pool because King Gustav and Queen Sylvia of Sweden spent their honeymoon here. Your David Livingstone also came here twice during his journeys of exploration.

"For me it all started the first time I came into the bush; I was 22 and until then I wanted to study medicine, but I was instantly hooked and the bush has become my whole life. Conservation when I was a child was not so important, but it is at the heart of Wilderness Safaris and it makes me so happy knowing I can help look after our beautiful country."

The atmosphere that One has helped to create was immediately obvious on our first "Boma Night", when the guests eat in the boma, or kraal, a traditional community enclosure, adjacent to the camp. The singing of the Kings Pool staff choir, which we recorded, was so powerful that I couldn't stop myself listening to it again and again.

As I write this, it is only 10 days since our arrival. We have been struck not just by the sights but by the sounds of the otherworld of the bush. All those hoots, rattles, tweets, clucks, clicks, squeaks, squawks, snorts, whistles, warbles and wheebles sound so rich and exotic compared with the rumblings and grumblings of the internal combustion engine and the electronic pings and bleeps that are such a feature of life back home.

In the heat of the day, when the temperatures rise into the 90s (30s C) as we wait for the summer rains, the sound of the cicadas among the mopane trees reaches a crescendo against the glorious counterpoint of the slow, haunting pulse, somewhere between a whistle and a hoot, of a bird named the swamp boubou. Later, as darkness falls, the glockenspiel orchestra of the reed frogs begins tuning up.

Already, we have enjoyed some bush magic to rival any of our past experiences. Births and deaths are headline news. The day before yesterday a lioness we often see gave birth to two cubs. Having been left one-eyed in a mysterious accident, she has already lost 15 cubs to hyenas, leopards and other male lions invading her territory – a reminder that the bush, for all its beauty, is an unforgiving environment even for a top predator.

According to Oduetse Modika, the head guide, the lioness's parenting skills, and those of the pride in general, are improving. We hope for the best, and will keep you up to date with her progress.

The death of an elephant always tugs powerfully at the heartstrings. The emotional intelligence of the animal is hard to deny. Just this morning, the guests returned from their game drive having witnessed an elephant "wake" following the death of a calf from unknown causes. Gathering in a circle, the animals blew dust from their trunks over the body. When the rest of the herd turned to leave, one adolescent was left behind, a sentinel beside her lost sibling.

We have also seen some spellbinding cameos: a leopard that had just dragged an antelope carcase up a tree being chased away by a pride of lions; a rare roan antelope, a creature that seemed to have the body of a horse and a mask as distinctive as Zorro's; a crash of hippos leaving behind a trail of bubbles as they dived under the Queen Sylvia, the camp's answer to the African Queen; a giant kingfisher comically smashing a fish at least three times its own size against the trunk of a tree; a lilac-breasted roller that looked as though it had been painted by an overexcited toddler let loose on a full palette of watercolours.

Seeing the reaction of the guests to these happenings is one of the rewards of working in a safari camp. The talk over dinner returns again and again to the life-changing effect of these experiences and how the wilderness itself can help us all to rediscover our humanity.

"After all, it's us humans, not the animals, who are destroying this planet," one of the guests said to us last night. "Technology gives us many things, but it's accompanied by a dangerous loss of our connection with nature."

Experiencing a true wilderness unplugged from the matrix of modern technology seems to be one way of re-establishing that connection. We have a feeling this will be a year to savour.

The basics

Richard Madden is travelling with Wilderness Safaris (wilderness-safaris.com), which offers access to more than eight million acres of Africa's finest wildlife reserves through the environment-friendly camps it runs in nine countries and its overland safaris.

His flight to Maun was with South African Airways (flysaa.com). A return from London to Maun via Johannesburg with SAA costs £1,150 per person, including all taxes, when booked through Africa Travel in London (0845 450 1520).